Bilderberg, China, and the Rulers of the World

Bilderberg, China, and the Rulers of the World

The Bilderberg Group is a secretive, elite membership club that meets once every year. It started in 1954, inviting 30 members from the US, 80 from Europe, and 10 from international organisations, representing decision-makers of politics, diplomacy, the financial community, and the mass media. They book a hotel and discuss how the world should be. They met in a Catalonian seaside resort of Sitges in 2010, and the meeting was of course, undisclosed.

Are the people who ‘really run the world’ meeting this weekend? (Haaretz)

There is a strict non-discretion rule imposed on participants, therefore, nothing is beyond a rumour or unidentified speculation when it comes to what was discussed and agreed. It is nonetheless an important conference that influences the course of modernity. European integration, war on terror, invasion of Iraq, global climate change – many have been speculated that Bilderberg was the mastermind. It’s often observed to be the necessary ritual for leaders-to-be. Suspect attendees include Tony Blair right before becoming the Prime Minister, Bill Clinton before swearing in as the President. President Bush attended the Italy meeting in 2004, Secretary Rice and Chancellor Paulson attended in 2008 in Virginia. The 2009 meeting in Greece was attended by Secretary of Treasury Geithner and the World Bank president Zoellick. Geithner denied his attendance but his alibi during the two days was blank, and Zoellick doesn’t bother to lie.

Geithner to take orders from global elite at Bilderberg (Free Speech Systems)

If Geithner has indeed participated, then the reason is obvious. The grand theme of the 2009 meeting was the great depression triggered by US financial crisis. Geithner was summoned by the West’s elites to answer his economic policy.

The World Government, Really?

According to the Times of London, the Bilderberg secretariat had sent out a booklet containing essays for discussion. As a prescription for the global depression, it suggested two options. One was to endure the decade-long depression. The other was to end the depression earlier by structural transformation of the world economy which was to be accompanied by limited national sovereignty.

Shadowy Bilderberg group meets in Greece (The Times)

Most participants of Bilderberg are international capital owners and their advisors. The first option is inconceivable for them so the second option would be preferred. It was a conference of how to restrict the sovereignty of nation states in favour of more efficient world order.

Bilderberg wants global department of health, global treasury (Free Speech Systems)

This is not a revolutionary idea. Bilderberg has kept this idea of world government since 30 years. The basic outline is to expand the power of the UN and its agencies. The world economy will be more efficient than relying on the community of nation states. Frequent attendee PM Carl Bildt of Sweden argued that the WHO and the IMF should be promoted to World Government Ministry of Health and World Government Ministry of Treasury. It was coincided with the global epidemic of swine flu. Bilderberg certainly finds it favourable that the WHO now has increased normative authority in directing what the health offices of nation states should do. A number of conspiracy theory weblogs often claim pharmaceutical companies (Bilderberg members) spread the virus. Similar line of arguments can be found for the financial crisis.

The UN, under the current system, is financed by the maintenance fees paid by member states. It cannot assume superiority over nations. Bilderberg ponders to change this situation by carbon tax for petrol and solidarity tax for air tickets to finance the UN.

Capitalism Demands Growth

For the dissidents of Bilderberg, both from the left and right camps, criticise the new world order as a system of capital concentration to the Western capital owners while leaving the poor poorer. Liberals perceive it as a biumvirate order between Rockefeller (representing the US) and the Rothschild (representing Europe). In the conservative logic, Bilderberg is a conspirator organisation by Zionists and communists (note: to them both are Jewish).

But if the rich wishes to make more money, they don’t need to create a new world government. If Obama reverses Bush’s self-destructive policies to restore US hegemony, and if the G7 resists against the G20, the old Anglocentric world order will return. To me, Bilderberg’s world government aims to destroy this old order. If the emerging markets which were previously put in the periphery are integrated to the core of the world economy, the aggregate growth potential of the world will be higher.

Currently, the IMF is discussing the review of China’s voting rights. By IMF’s founding charter, voting rights are distributed according to the size and the maturity of the economy. For long, the US occupied the single largest voting share, followed by Japan and Germany. Nations are discussing whether to give China second largest voting rights by 2011. The veto right by the US (important issues must be supported by 85% of the votes thus the US with 17% of voting rights is the only veto state) is expected to be abolished too. Bilderberg wishes to transform the IMF to the world’s central bank, which will no longer be controlled by America and its allies but by the G2.

China may have bigger say in restructured IMF (China Daily)

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz suggests IMF’s Special Drawing Rights to become the international reserve currency instead of the dollar. France and even Britain have shown interests in this ambitious plan.

The dollar’s last days? (Malta Independent)

Why is Bilderberg, a club of elites from the West, acting against the current Anglo-American world system? Do the international capital owners really wish development and profits in the US and Europe? If their primary interest is the development and profits in the global scale, the current petit equilibrium of Anglocentric world system should be replaced with the one in which developing countries can freely advance their economies. The old Anglocentric world was established by the free trade under the British Empire, whose benefits spilled to the US, Europe and Japan, and the rest was kept in poverty or contained as the Eastern Bloc. This petit equilibrium started to face limitations in the 1960s when the economies of the Triad matured. Grand strategists of Bilderberg felt the need for the transformation to the grand equilibrium such that the world economy would include the developing nations and the Eastern bloc. This was materialised by the Sino-US normalisation in the 1970s and the end of the cold war in the 1980s.

Is Bilderberg Neocon?

Popular conspiracy theory goes that only the super-elites are admitted to the covert meetings of Bilderberg, where they decide the actual dealings for the world. I disagree. Bilderberg was created by the British intelligence during the 1950s, in an attempt to lure the world elites to pro-British strategies in the cold war system. Now, Bilderberg speaks of the world government, which is effectively in conflict with Britain’s global political management. Participants of Bilderberg are not united in one agenda – they represent divergent political economic ideologies.

Mr. Robert Zoellick, the president of the World Bank Group and a regular participant of Bilderberg, is one of the quintessential neocon. He was hired by the military-industry complex during the late 1970s to reverse the détente. After the cold war, he was the man behind the draft concept of War on Terror – the second-coming of the cold war. His goal, however, doesn’t seem to revitalise the old Anglocentric world systems. As a deputy secretary of state in the Bush administration, he advocated to support China to become ‘a responsible superpower’ nation. If Bilderberg’s understanding of neoconservatism is the one based on Prof. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, their expectation is wrong.

Bilderberg, unlike the World Economic Forum, is reserved for Europeans and Americans. In the 1970s, Rockefeller tried to invite the Japanese to transform Bilderberg from a ‘Euro-American club’ to an ‘industrialised nations elite club’. But he couldn’t win the consensus, so he instead created the Triad Committee. An exception was Ms. Sadako Ogata, but she wasn’t invited as a Japanese representative but as an expert of refugee and interventions issues. It is also observed that Bilderberg aimed to bring China to might, but they have never invited the Chinese as regulars. The rise of China may not be the consequence of China’s own efforts but is the consequence of the strategy by the international capitalists.

The G7 has given its way to the G20, where the BRIC exerts much more influence. Similarly, Bilderberg is also losing its prowess. More opportunities are now available to more open and multiethnic fora such as the Davos Conference (in Switzerland) or its offshoot the Boao Forum (in Hainang, China).

Who Created the Bilderberg, After All? (note: this section is more speculative)

Bilderberg was held for the first time in Bilderberg Hotel in a Dutch city of Arnhem in 1954. The name got its root from this hotel. The organiser was Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands who owned the hotel. Prince Bernhard was a controversial figure in the Netherlands, with his origin in the German aristocracy, married the Dutch princess Beatrix (now Queen), flirted with Nazism, later changed his mind, and was known to have a flamboyant personality and aristocratic attitude. He was the chairperson of the Bilderberg until 1976, when he was involved in the Lockheed Scandal, in which he was said to have appropriated a million dollars to syndicate aircraft contracts.

Prince Bernhard was a mediator of the Bilderberg, but was not instrumental to the actual formation of the elite network. The origin of Bilderberg traces to the WWII, when the Polish and Belgian political exiles in Britain were put together by the Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs), to discuss the post-war European politics. It was a useful continental network for Britain, who had an ambition to design the European economic integration. The first Bilderberg meeting was three years before the creation of the European Economic Community. Since the Napoleonic Wars, the primary purpose of the British intelligence in Europe had been ‘balance and rule’ so that no single power would challenge Britain again. Prince Bernhard’s creation of Bilderberg is a derivative of this political tradition. As a reward, the Prince was never questioned by the Allied nations about his past sympathy towards Germany and Nazism. His resignation as a chairperson in 1976 coincided with the downfall of many of the polypolarist politicians. (Though this happened a few years before), Nixon, who reconciled with China, was given the Watergate, and the Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka, who followed Nixon’s path with China, had to resign amidst his own involvement in the Lockheed incident. Similar government meltdown occurred in West Germany and Italy.

Reading Brzezinski 2

This is the second half of Brzezinski article.

What about ‘the rise of Japan and new China’?

Another curious perspective that Brzezinski averred is that the 500 years of Atlantic dominance will end as Japan and China rise. Does this mean Sino-Japanese leadership will topple Anglo-American hegemony?

The Japanese government has acted exactly in the opposite direction to Brzezinski’s prophecy. Tokyo wants to maintain its political subordination to the US as long as possible. Even if the US hegemony does collapse, Japan doesn’t seem to contribute to the post-US polycentric world order. Her policies started to become more autarkic in character, as if she just wants to wait for US’s resurrection. In the wake of fiscal disaster in the US, in 2009 Tokyo increased its budget for “cooperation expenditure for US Forces realignment” by 3 folds. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was delighted to contribute more to the US.

Since the 1970s, Brzezinski has looked down on Japan since it “has no mind to participate in international politics but only remain a vassal state of the US”. Japan doesn’t seem to care. Brzezinski’s “Japan and new China” may in fact mean “new China”, such that he may have used “Japan” in order to avoid labelled a Sinophile.

His analysis on East Asia became famous with his article called “Eurasian Geopolitics”, appeared on Foreign Affairs in 1997. (Foreign Affairs) He called the Eurasian continent as a “giant geopolitical chessboard” and adumbrated how the US may rule this vast continent. Many read this article as a belligerent statement for domination, but its true objective was a grand stabilisation strategy by incorporating Russia, China and Japan to the NATO. It was thus crucial that the US cooperates with China. In 1998, Clinton turned this idea into reality when he visited China while skipping Japan – a key ally to the US. After the subsequent Republican administration, the Democratic government would once again rely on Brzezinski, such that this thesis from the 1990s is regaining its validity. A “pan-Eurasian security scheme” is becoming a reality in the form of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation + Six-Party Talks (on North Korea).

Who serves as the bridgehead?

Ruler of Eurasia is the ruler of the world. In this sense, Brzezinski is a typical Cold War strategist, or an underdog of the military-industry complex. However, how he suggests to rule Eurasia is unique. The post-WWII US diplomacy had been based on the strong alliance with Britain (west of Eurasia) and Japan (east of Eurasia), and contain the continent itself. Brzezinski wants to advance the bridgehead toward inland. The new key partners should be the emerging EU (Franco-Germany) and an Asian regional power (China). With the two regional powers on America’s side, the Eurasian continent will be stabilised.

This is particularly daunting to Britain. If the EU grows further, Britain’s influence in Europe will be weakened. Such EU connecting directly with the US would mean even worse. Same can be said to Japan, if the US connects directly with China. Both Britain and Japan are politically Russophobes but the EU and China are much friendlier to Russia. As the US values EU and China more, America’s policy on Russia will inevitably have to become more cooperative. Washington’s global strategy then becomes polycentric.

Brzezinski often speaks against Bush and Chaney. In practice, they ran Brzezinski’s strategy, antagonising the rest of the world. Brzezinski is the mother tree of neoliberal politics that manifests the just military action by Uncle Sam. Its Republican version is the neocon. Brzezinski, Scowcroft, and Kissinger – they all argue similar policies, that US to (over)act strong America which eventually leads the world to politically awaken in an anti-US character.

Currently, policy makers in Washington don’t endeavour to democratise China. They allowed the Olympic Games in Beijing and the World Expo in Shanghai while China kept its communist dictatorship. In the 1970s, Brzezinski was a presidential attaché in the Carter administration, which normalised relationship with China after Nixon’s visit to Beijing. Brzezinski was always behind Carter’s China policy and supported China’s re-entry to the international community, much in the same way that Nixon and Kissinger did. His focus on China is clear. If Japan improves its relation with China and Russia, and adjusts itself to the polycentric new world order, it is Brzezinski’s “the end of Atlantic leadership by the rise of Japan and new China”. If Japan refuses to improve its Chinese relations and stubbornly resorts to the traditional subordination to the US, Obama would overlook Japan and instead emphasise on the G2 with China. 

Reading Brzezinski 1

This is the first half of Brzezinski article. Second half follows soon.

The Prophecy

Zbigniew Brzezinski has been the leader of the Democratic foreign policy department, and is an advisor to President Obama. He published an interesting thesis in 2008. In his The Global Political Awakening, he adumbrated the loss of US leadership and assumed intensified global disagreements on the environment, society and economy. He writes, “For the first time in history, nearly all of humanity become politically active, politically awakened, and politically connected”, “the worldwide political craving for cultural dignities and economic development, suppressed so far by the colonial rule and imperial domination, will rise”, “in the past 500 years, the Atlantic basin was the centre of the world but it will end with the rise of Japan and new China. India and Russia may follow”. The Global Political Awakening (IHT)

Brzezinski has pronounced the phrase “global political awakening” already in his 2003 book ‘The Choice’. Now that he is Obama’s policy advisor, the worldwide political awakening has noticeably intensified. We are witnessing that US hegemony has declined,  the dominance of the West is coming to an end, rise of anti-US movements in the Islamic world and South America, followed by riots in the US and Britain. It seems the global political awakening is real. Unrests in Greece have spread to other European nations such as France, Italy, Spain, Denmark and Sweden. The global financial crisis continues to jeopardise the pension systems in Europe. Generous social security and welfare system that Western Europe has proudly maintained are facing a collapse. Political turbulence in Europe is likely to stay.

Report reveals pension schemes will collapse (Independent.ie)

It is in the New York capital owners’ interest to politically awaken the colonised peoples and create a number of new nation states. The industrial revolution should spread to all corners of the Earth so that the world economy will grow faster. In Brzezinski’s words, the multi-polarisation of the world (as against US’s single hegemony) has its objective in the pursuit of cultural dignity and economic opportunities across the globe. Colonialism has suppressed the liberal development in the industrialising countries. Political awakening would boost nationalism that favours industrial growth. Goldman Sachs has predicted that the world’s middle class population would explode to 2 billion. It is a dream-come-true for international capital owners.

Boom time for global bourgeoisie (The Financial Times)

Multi-polarisation would have another advantage. In the past 50 years, the industrial complex that has supported the alliance between US, Britain and Israel has strived to destabilise many fragile nations. The rise of Russia, China or the Islamic world would counterbalance the destabilising effect of the triple alliance. Without the provocation by the alliance, anti-US Islamism would not have risen.  On a surface level, Brzezinski posits Anglo-centricism or ‘international cooperationism’, which sits in the opposite end of the multi-polarism. According to him, the US must occupy the core of the international system. Only the US is able to lead the world such that the world would be thrown into chaos if the American leadership is lost. His ideology remains arrogant. The same line of argument is observed in the Managing Global Insecurity (MGI) Report, written by Madeleine Albright who was a student of Brzezinski. A new era of international cooperation for a changed world (Brookings Institute)

Both the Brzezinski thesis and the MGI report agree that the world is becoming polycentric. There, he argues that the G8 has become a passé. Cooperation with the G20 or the BRICs will be the future form of global governance, in which leaders from the US, EU, Japan, China, Russia and India must deepen informal dialogues to nurture trust. The incumbent superpower US and the next potential China have to share the responsibility to lead the world. Since his thesis is based on his lecture at the Chatham House (Royal British Institute for International Relations), he described ‘Europe’ as Britain and Germany and France. However, in his 1997 thesis on Foreign Affairs magazine he assumed the players of the European integration were Germany and France.

A geostrategy for Eurasia (Foreign Affairs)

Balkan, the Middle East, and Israel

Phillip Stevens, a columnist for the FT, has also written about the transnational political awakening in the third world, inspired by the internet and satellite broadcasts. He thinks the reason why the world looks chaotic these days is because our (=the West’s) value system is obsolete. Borrowing the words from Brent Scowcroft (Republican strategist), “[P]reviously fragile regions of the Balkans, the Middle East and central Asia have awakened.” Scowcroft participated in the making of the MGI Report. Both Brzezinski and Scowcroft see the emerging world order centred on several regional powers as a positive development.

(A political awakening that recasts the global landscape)

Since Brzezinski is a White House advisor, it is likely that his strategy becomes Obama’s strategy. Brzezinski thesis argues that the US should immediately commence negotiation with Iran, as well as with the moderate faction within the Taliban. Priority is Palestine – US ought to support a new demilitarised Palestinian state, whose borders are protected by the NATO security forces. Israel must accept the division of Jerusalem, while it may keep some of the settlements in the area. Both parties would need to agree on the abandon the refugees’ right to return in exchange of financial compensation.

Effectively, this means Israel’s right to exist will be guaranteed if it accepts to give up some of its occupied territories. Nevertheless, it is unconceivable that European nations would send their battalions as the NATO forces. All over the Middle East, Islamism is on the rise. Europe would not accept a dirty job for Israel. Politically, Israel is losing its joker.